The Blauwhuys in Watou: the lines on the roof of a shed are from Rutger Kopland's ‘Still-Life with Golden Plover’ (‘Stilleven met gouden plevier’): ‘they are asleep in a frozen world, in / an orchid, a kitchen garden, a ditch, / they dream they have been found, taken home, / laid down on that table - but why,’ (Tr. James Brockway)
and there: on the wall of the Wethuis, for instance, the first time that site on the Marktplein had been used.
In 1995 it was the turn of another magician: Jan Fabre. Until then he had always been associated with urban culture, with dark theatres and museums, though his fascination with insects might lead one to suspect that he was capable of other things. And he confirmed that suspicion brilliantly. Fabre took the poems Mandelinck handed him and located them in the space with a fine equilibrium. Unforgettable was the teabags installation in the cellar of the Douviehuis: as you came down the stairs you saw hundreds of teabags swinging in the wind and smelt the wonderful aroma of the tea in the water. And while the teabags mirrored themselves in that water you heard actors' voices simultaneously whispering and stuttering Guido Gezelle's poem ‘The Water Scribbler’ (‘Het schrijverke’) about a dancing dragonfly.
In 1998 Gwy Mandelinck joined up with smak, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Municipal Museum of Current Art) in Ghent. In that year the museum's curator Jan Hoet brought some choice items from its collection to Watou. Gwy Mandelinck came up with verbal fireworks to match them. This time the title was ‘Before it disappears and after’, a line from the Dutch poet Rutger Kopland who turns up every year in Watou; the result was a real feast for the senses. Among other delights, wintry lines by Kopland were set against a summery tableau vivant by Mario Merz: tables of glass and granite spread with colourful vegetables.
In 2000, under the flag Storm Centres, the poetrysummer voyaged through Europe with a markedly more international choice of poetry. This was mainly because with this theme Jan Hoet wanted to draw attention to smaller countries and language-areas within Europe as centres of turbulence. He selected mainly young, still relatively unknown artists. And again that resulted in a lively confrontation between the genres, with a regular and fascinating fusion. Yet perhaps it was Jan Fabre, again, who provided a high-point, in a little house on the Douvieweg. Here Death - as we already said, a regular visitor who always lies in wait for you in Watou - almost takes your breath away in the oppressive combination of Peter Verhelst's poems, the claustrophobic little rooms and the voice of actor Dirk Roofthooft, who was responsible for the aural presentation of all the poems. Fabre's Salvator mundi, a small globe of beetles with a human backbone rising out of it, offered the visitors' souls little hope of salvation. But then, Watou is not a place for consumers of art to stroll languidly around, for the poetry of its summers is like the dust of the village's roads: it all looks very peaceful, but the words get into your clothes and stick there, longer than you want.
paul demets
Translated by Tanis Guest.